Intellectual property clearance

One of the Incubator's roles is to ensure that proper attention is
paid to intellectual property. From time to time, an external
codebase is brought into the ASF that is not a separate incubating project but still represents a
substantial contribution that was not developed within the ASF's
source control system and on our public mailing lists. This is a
short form of the Incubation checklist, designed to allow code to be
imported with alacrity while still providing for oversight.

This form is not for new projects. This is for
projects and PMCs that have already been created and are receiving
a code donation into an existing codebase. Any code that was
developed outside of the ASF SVN repository and our public mailing
lists must be processed like this, even if the external developer
is already an ASF committer.

The intent is to simply help to ensure, and record, that due
diligence (Software Grant, CLA, Corp CLA, license and dependencies)
has been paid to the incoming code, so that it can be merged into an
existing project/module. These legal documents are available on the
ASF Licenses page.

The receiving PMC is responsible for doing the work. The Incubator is
simply the repository of the needed information. Once a PMC directly
checks-in a filled-out short form, the Incubator PMC will need to
approve the paper work after which point the receiving PMC is free to
import the code. Note that only lazy consensus is
required. The IP clearance template
contains more details of this process.

Additional notes

The software grant requires that "Licensor owns or has sufficient
rights to contribute the software source code...". In the case where
there are multiple entities involved that only together have sufficient
rights (for example in the case of an existing external project with
multiple contributors), there are basically two possibilities to continue:

All entities sign the same software grant together and submit one software
grant form. This is preferred but obviously can complicate the process
considerably.

The alternative is that each party sign its own software grant while
everyone references the same contribution (designated by a URL and an MD5
hash over the ZIP file representing the contribution). It is recommended
that the software grant form is modified in order to have a line for each
party so the completeness of the paperwork can be verified upon receipt.